Floral Art With Oomph

Someone told me that floral art was really quite boring. My response was that they hadn’t obviously looked at my floral art! Whilst I work with straight photographs my passion is photo manipulation and it has been my mission to produce floral art with ‘oomph’.

Floral Art With Oomph

Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden

At the opening of my art exhibition in Paciano, Umbria in October last year, my husband was asked what it was like to live with someone who looked at a field of flowers and saw fairies.

They were referring to this image ‘Umbrian Wild Flowers 3’. I have always maintained this image has fairies in the illuminated area in the bottom right quadrant. It is wonderful what some beautiful wild flowers, sunlight and a bit of imagination can produce.

Prize-winning Floral Art

In May 2016 I won two awards at the Light Space & Time Botanicals 2016 Art Exhibition. I was also awarded a special merit award for my piece ‘Ghostly Primulas‘ and a special recognition award in the photography and digital category for ‘Vainglorious Violet‘.

It was nice to have my, rather different, floral art recognized in this way.

Taking a Different Perspective

With my floral art I like to take a different perspective as you can see here from ‘Heads Above the Others’.  Whilst the temptation is to take the whole plant in its setting, here I have focused on two main flower heads. I loved the architecture of the flower and petals and was able to bring out the soft colors of the flowers behind them to make a contrast.

A different perspective also means pushing the boundaries a bit in presenting something in an unusual way.

Here is a canna lily with raindrops presented in black and white. I have a color version from a slightly different angle but I really like this simple study of the tones and textures. The raindrops work well too, even in black and white.

Deconstructed Floral Art

Most recently I created a series of poppy images using a method I call ‘deconstruction’. This involves starting with a perfect photograph and gradually removing elements of it to create the impression of the image. I explored it in detail in my blog post ‘Mad About Poppies‘.

Another example of my deconstruction approach is ‘Violets Are Not Always Blue’, a print of which was recently sold to a buyer in the USA.

My imagination for this image was stirred by memories of my old Nan who loved white violets. Having taken a perfectly good photograph of blue violets I decided to produce them in a way that my Nan might have approved of.

So, floral art is boring? I don’t think so!

Before you go

My name is Dorothy Berry-Lound an artist and writer. You can find out more about my art and writing at https://dorothyberryloundart.com.

You can follow me on Facebook.

Thank you for reading!